Sunday, November 29, 2015

...okay, corny title word-plays aside, we follow up yesterday's Song of the Week feature with a 1st-timer "Artist Corner Time" here on Sympho-Neighbours to talk a bit about some of music circle IOSYS' contributions to other rhythm games in recent years.

Friday, November 27, 2015

Namco's Ace Combat series is probably the most well-known flight sim/arcade shooter hybrid, combining the graphics and real-world planes with fun dogfighting. The games typically take place in an alternate world called Strangereal, with its own military and political timeline, and has games take place in various conflicts in that world over different time periods. Some other games take place in a real world setting, with stories seperate from the Strangereal continuity. What remains constant however is the music, ranging from sweeping orchestral pieces to hard rock songs to electronic songs, all prime for inclusion in Taiko no Tatsujin.

Now that the dust has settled down around the latest Taiko console game's release, we're finally ready to talk with you about our plans for the scheduled housecleaning plans for the very next month.

As usual, we're doing the usual routine checks for outdated site corners and features, such as the Taiko Guinness Hall and dead video links among Taiko games' song list pages, but we'll try to step up our game by also implementing a little few changes and tweaks to the site's features. Here are some of our currently-scheduled works for the next weeks!

The Song Series general page will change its name to Song Series Showcase, a minor change that will also reflect on the single series pages! All series will have a slightly different title wording for a more professional look, indicating the main song genre in the title. The Ridge Racer series, for example, will be renamed to "Game Music Showcase: Ridge Racer".

Some pre-existing song series will have more tracks added, due to either Wii U 3 debut or... us simply forgetting about their existence/series relation (...yeah, sorry). Among these we have EAT'EM UP! (Ridge Racer), Symphonic Medley No.1 (Classic Medley), Animal Crossing New Leaf Medley (General Medley) Shiuryu (Season Dragon) and FUJIN Rumble (Taito).

We're picking back an old feature back to the grave, and then expand it! Together with us struggling once more in order to complete the Vocaloid Corner, we're also aiming to do an Idolm@ster Corner, in occasion for the imminent dual Ps-Vita dual games and generally heavy contribution of the series to Taiko gaming. The corner will sort all the Im@s songs out by release game/album (just like the aforementioned Must Songs games) and have links to their Song of the Week articles (if those are already up)! Both corners will appear in the main Song Series Showcase page.

Another new icon is going to pop up in arcade/console song list pages! Already appearing in our recently-updated Taiko Wii U 3 song list page, this purple Ura Oni figure () will appear for Ura Oni songs with 2-player patterns, together with the regular red Ura Oni icon if said song has both unique 1P and 2P Ura modes (ie: not using part of the 2P Ura patterns when played in single player).

Once again, we'll also do a translation check for ambiguous song titles. Most recently, we've fixed up the translation of YMY's latest song (Kathiawar no Cutlass), but if more similar mistakes will pop up, we'll be more than happy to fix them and warn you about the changes.

Some of the eldest arcade/console games descriptions have been updated, but we'll consider doing a makeover of some of the other ones, if we deem that course of action necessary.

Last but not least, we'll be popping up a small corner about the Taiko no Tatsujin Manga that has been recently showing up on the Internet. We won't be up for translating the whole thing, but that won't stop us from acknowledging its existence and bringing up some trivia about it!

I know this is quite a lot of stuff to look after in our immediate future, but we're aiming to check/clear all of these within the end of this year. We're currently testing out and preparing selected new features that will replace some obsolete parts of our blog, but the housecleaning and the updates/tweaks mentioned above come first. Keep up checking our Changelog next month in order to see what's being implemented from time to time!

With that said, I'm off; as you can see, there's a lot of work to do here... See you around!

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Although if it looks like we won't be able to see this year's foreign Tenkaichi Otogesai songs on Taiko arcades (or any other external franchise, for what that matters), we still have the duty to report the last batch of songs for the event.

Above is the crossed-over Aka no Senritsu on Synchronica -one of the only two for the event, being from Bandai Namco arcade series- with the other ones available right after the jump.

As the last Thursday of the month, it's time for V Version's latest DLC delivery news, which were preceded by one last video teaser from Dark Attribute (TOMOKI) on V Version's Twitter account. Ponder about this last hint before discovering the identity of the song teased for all this time...

Being the next home console Taiko game's launch day, today the Taiko Team feels very generous in the news department by unveiling part of what is shaping to be one of the most content-packed pre-release livestreams to date!

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

夜明けまであと3秒 Yoake Made Ato 3-byou (4/5/7/9; 814 notes on Oni)Among the Wii U3 shenanigans, today is also where all the second-phase songs for the second Tenkaichi Otogesai adds to AOU-shop cabinets. This is... rather easy for a presumed song for the finals: less sofuran than a modern im@s song, moderate patterns with the general modern 9s, and pales into minority comparing with the preliminary song Aka no Senritsu.

While the 2nd Tenkaichi Otogesai songs on Taiko no Tatsujin and Synchronica will reach the opposing arcade family this Thursday, the other 3 rhythm game franchises in the tournament will have an extra song for the Final Block round. With the Groove Coaster track being unveiled a few weeks back (see here!), we have the maimai and SOUND VOLTEX series left, whose tracks got revealed today.

For Sega's maimai ORANGE+, we have the song Axeria from the independent music circle AcuticNotes, while SDVX III GRAVITY WARS gets Moonlight Ranbu (月光乱舞) from happy hardcore bemani composer P*Light.

All seems normal, but the hint of something bad happening in the event's background can be caught by taking a closer look at the latest development update posts made by the not-Bandai Namco music games in merit of the latest Tenkaichi Otogesai song additions (quick links to the announcements for Groove Coaster, maimai and SOUND VOLTEX). All of the following updates mention only their franchise-proprietary song coming this Thursday with, once again, no mentions to the other recently-revealed tracks.

This, unfortunately, seems to confirm a trend for this edition of the Tenkaichi Otogesai that was already in the air with the first round of songs: unless something else will be said by the AOU on the subject matter, none of the songs being introduced by this event is going to reach out the other external rhythm game franchises, with the sole exceptions of Taiko track Aka no Senritsu coming on Syncronica and Synchronica track Yoake Made Ato 3-byou coming on Taiko.

Another AOU teaser pops up for this year's Tenkaichi Otogesai tourney, as we got some hints about the other SOUND VOLTEX track. According to the tweet above, this is going to be a Japanese-styled song, with Kaguya-hime from Japanese folklore pictured on the song's album art. The song will also try to capture the likeness of someone else, but part of the tweet is blurred...

Sunday, November 22, 2015

As a way to wrap the week up, here's a minor bit of news about next week's big Taiko console release, which (at this point) isn't advertised at all in any official news-related websites.

Together with the Pac-Man and Animal Crossing amiibo figurines, it turns out that Atsumete Tomodachi Daisakusen will be compatible with every other amiibo released to this day! The catch is, however, that none of the other models will unlock exclusive content, as they'll give out a random amount of Don Kobans. As a reminder, Don Kobans are the Wii U games' cash that can be collected by playing the games' modes (outside from Wii U1) and then used to unlock the game's contents through the Mekadon Gacha machines.

Nothing else has been said on the subject matter, such as eventual amiibo usage restrictions and/or day constrains to the amiibo-related unlocks; we'll just have to wait for the release day to see if the game's unlockable content can all be unlocked in one swoop with Nintendo's collectible figurines.

While we are weeks away from the next big Taiko releases, V Version's Twitter account is keeping the Ps Vita flame alive and strong with selected messages for everone to enjoy! Above is a tweet from Nippon Falcom's account, which teased yesterday two out of the 3 most voted songs for their poll at the moment. While we don't know who's at the top at the moment, Koi no Shooting Star (from Tokyo Xanadu) and Gin no Ishi (from Sora no Kiseki) are clowning the competition!

After the jump are a couple of messages from V Version's director himself.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Errata corrige from our side on today's scheduled Tenkaichi Otogesai'15 website update, as the main topic is the tournament's incoming qualifier rounds against of the event's new stretch of songs.

The Qualifier events will run from tomorrow to November 29th in selected AOU arcade centers, with each of the participating franchises having a 3-song trial. For the Taiko arcades, players are competing with newcomer Aka no Sentritsu and two of the past Tenkaichi event's cross-over boss songs: jubeat's FLOWER and maimai's Garakuta Doll Play. The matches will be held under the Oni mode (regular Oni only) and Shin'Uchi score rule setting combo, and whoever wins 2 out of 3 matches is the winner.

For the other participating franchises' tourney settings, we redirect you to its dedicated page on the 2nd Tenkaichi Otogesai's website. Let it be known, however, that Taiko games' Kita Saitama 2000 will be causing havoc among the SOUND VOLTEX division's players...

Be it on the AOU's Twitter account on in other livestream events, we finally got new updates on the 2nd Tenkaichi Otogesai's Final Block contents, although being peppered with a side of sad news for Taito fans.

As also noted by chatbox user Gozeison, ZUNTATA member and Groove Coaster sound director Hirokazu 'COSIO' Koshio is graduating from Taito's in-house musician unit in the near future, leaving his key roles in the aforementioned rhythm game series as well.

With that said, the announcement (which was made in the latest of the ZUNTATA Night livestream series) was paired with another reveal proving that he's far from retiring the musical games scene, as the Groove Coster franchise will have another COSIO song as Tenkaichi representing tune! The track Black MInD will be made available in GC arcades on November 26th, so it's very likely that we are going to see the other Final Block songs in the same day.

For the reveal of the other Final Block songs, however, we'll have to wait one more day, as the Tenkaichi website will be updated with all the rules and songs of the tourney's latter half.

In case you want to see how the top people do on the first day of inclusion for !!!Chaos Time!!!, here's the global (Japan/Asia combined) Murasaki ver. aggregate Day One Rankings. The best at clear rate is 6-good, only missing the top score (1,215,170/8-good) by 20-something drumroll hits. The running has since topped again on the second day with a 122K, 1-good run.

And 80-plus percentage of Twitter voters deems Etou unforgivable for the "mischievous" attempt of the Murasaki ver. last boss.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Demo/Promo versions of Taiko no Tatsujin games began to be spread shortly before the release of the 6th Playstation 2 videogame, and since then they've been ranging across different platforms, in order to either promote a Taiko no Tatsujin game's release or being part of minor collaboration events.

The Taiko no Tatsujin demo/promo versions listed here are either modes/minigames that are part of games from other franchises or stand-alone demo versions for selected titles.

!!!カオスタイム!!! !!!Chaos Time!!! (5/7/8/10; 987 notes on Oni)
Can we just say that this is the culmination of Yuugen no Ran's speed and Donkama 2000's "effed-upness"? That the recommended course for action today is just barely clear?

Full Comboing the song will net you the Chaos Time Master (カオスタイムの達人) title. Even when it did not specify Oni, we doubt anyone would come too close to that place soon.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Where !!!Chaos Time!!! by t+pazolite is joining Asian ver. Murasaki ver. on the same day (November 15) as Japan, following an update to G/V 5.04 happened just today (November 12). Now if only Wada Inu can stop blocking the ratings we can know more than that the Oni has at least 4 stars... not a lot of implications there you know.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

In general Japanese rhythm game lore, November 11th is a milestone day for Bemani games' fans by means of selected memes. In a similar way, the Taiko Team is giving this day a similar treatment to the Taiko lore, by dubbing it as the Bachi o Sensei day, with the two living Taiko drumsticks looking as an 11 if seen together. This year around, Bachi o Sensei day is being celebrated with some snaps of Daifuku and Takemoto with Bachi drumsticks.

Nothing of relevance on the news side is happening for the Taiko franchise, but let's wait for the so-much-promised details about White Version...

Monday, November 9, 2015

The newest V Version DLC Suggestion Poll is more than just one question ask for the title of the song, and some of you out there would be wanting a translation/guide for that, so here we deliver!

All questions are mandatory, and outside of the core DLC suggesting business is a small census of the V Version demographic. The data would probably be helpful in developing the next PS Vita Taiko game, perhaps?

Following the livestream goals, Twitter will be the grounds for the spawn of new Petit-charas! Tweet to @taiko_team stating your desired original Taiko no Tatsujin character by November 13 18:00 to have your vote counted.

Here's a boilerplate Japanese tweet message for you to use: just fill in the blank with the character you want! You can of course write in your own words if you can Japanese.

ぷちキャラのリクエストで_______のキャラでお願いします！For the Petit-chara Request, please include the character _______!

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Earlier this week, a (blue) bird told us that we passed 876 tweets sent from our Twitter account, @taikotimeblog! To celebrate this simple feat, we're taking a look at the last 876-combo notecount songs in Taiko.

Friday, November 6, 2015

Since the past Taiko 15th Anniversary livestream, three special 'Festivals' were announced, starring popular brands/names and influential events to spread the Taiko magic all across Japan (and even outside it!). Yesterday, the third of these special events has been revealed, featuring Exile members MAKIDAY and Mandy Sekiguchi (関口メンディー) from Japanese band EXILE.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

With a new Popular Song Pack for the Japanese version and another tris of Asian-centric licenses, there's something new for everyone to enjoy on V Version! After the jump are the videos of the brand new songs being released on this month.

While no press release has been made about this subject matter, the day of the release of the Popular Song Pack 7 in Japan also marks the launch of a new Chinese-exclusive DLC pack, under the name of B'in Music Popular Song Pack 2 (相信音樂人氣樂曲組合包 2). For the price of HK$21 / NT$90, said pack holds the following songs:

It's also worth mentioning that three of the Japanese Popular Song Pack 7 tracks (more specifically, Yubisaki Kara Hajimaru Monogatari, Bravely You and Calculator) can be bought individually for HK$10 / NT$43 each.

To nicely round up this blog entry, the Touhou Arrange Song Pack is also coming to the Not-Japanese V Version games for free, with both the songs and the Hakurei Reimu outfit. Grab it before the free download offer is gone!

We already did our own last Tuesday, so we don't need to talk about this again, don't we? If you head to the original blog entry, however, you'll find the smartphone wallpaper and Twitter icon rewards from the previous livestream comment challenge.

See you in a week, where the Taiko Team will properly introduce Taiko White Version and some new songs!

This month we look to the series in the making, i.e. the "Historic Figure Series" by Yuuya Kobayashi of IOSYS: Shotoku Taiko no "Hi Izuru Made Asuka" Oni (★9) and Yamatai Night Party Muzuakshii (★7). (NB. We are not yet starting their series feature only because the 3-song quorum is still short)

The tournament starts this Saturday from November 7~15 and come back again November 18 for the results.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Non-rhetorically in response to Lokamp's rhetoric question on Facebook, no "Lyrics Monday" is not yet a thing. It is just that Mondays often lack news so we try to keep the info void bearable with filler-like Lyrics Features on those days. If you guys really want this to be a real thing, let us know at any of the usual places (comments, chatbox, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

And while we're on the subject, we want to know what you want to see! Our first Lyrics Feature Request Poll consists of 16 songs with a slight focus on Wii 5/Wii U1 songs because the lyrics text are much more readily available. Pick one or multiple that you like and we will pan out future Lyrics Features by their popularity here. See the 16-song list after the jump.

If a song on your mind isn't on this list, don't fret! We'll probably get to them the next time we do this again, and it helps to leave that in the comments or anywhere else you can reach us.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

With more than 4 years in active with livestream shenanigans of sorts, the Taiko Team finally managed to shoot the 10th official installment of their livestream series. Glide through the rest of this post for having a full rundown (with visuals, no less) of this broadcasting milestone!

Following yesterday's livestream, the Wii U3 website is also update with new stuff, starting from the above quick 15-second TVCM. Here we are going to summarize all the Wii U3 news here in better detail than our Quick Takeaways post.

The latest livestream has just begun, but given the identity of some of this session's guest composers (t+pazo in particular) we found relevant to share this bit of news.

Back in October 13th, t+pazolite began advertising his 3rd solo album by gradually revealing songs he made for selected rhythm ghames that will get a longer version. As you can see, the first revealed track is maimai series' Garakuta Doll Play (which also appears on Taiko games), but in a Groove Coaster livestream on October 22nd, 2 more songs from said franchise (Satisfiction and OMANEKO Stroke) have been revealed to be featured in their extended forms, as also the album's teaser website lists.

This leads to today's ongoing livestream... is t+pazo's Taiko contribution going to be extended for his album? So far we have only Shiny Kung-fu Revival as the only NO song from the composer, but maybe something else altogether might be revealed during the livestream...

秋竜～Shiuryu～ Autumn Dragon ~Shiuryu~ (4/6/7/9; 750 notes on Oni)
Leaving a full coverage at the Season Dragon Series, but today's addition features multiple slight scroll speed changes and a Halloween-esque ballroom minuet section with plentiful of 12th that might throw off some people, but in otherwise aspects it is a rather tame 9★ when compared with 10th-star-stripped giants like The Carnivorous Carnival. And as with 3 out of 4 in the series, there is no Ura as of initial release... just yet.